The Linguistic Cycle: grammaticalization, economy,

and pronouns

Elly van Gelderen

Workshop Internacional sobre Gramaticalização

26 August 2010

ellyvangelderen@asu.edu

Outline

Grammaticalization Linguistic Cycle

Formal account of both: Feature Economy

Subject Cycle across languages

Implications

Aims

• To identify recurring linguistic change

• To explain this in terms of the child interpreting input in a particular way

• Examine internal and external factors of linguistic change and their interaction

Grammaticalization

(1) phrase > word/head > clitic > affix > 0

adjunct > argument > agreement > 0

(2) lexical head > grammatical > 0

Examples of CyclesNegative Cyclea negative argument > negative adverb > negative

particle > zerob verb > aspect > negative > C Subject Agreement demonstrative/emphatic > 3 pronoun > agreement

> zeronoun/emphatic > 1/2 pronouns > agreement > zeroCase or Definiteness or DPdemonstrative > definite article > ‘Case’ > zeroFuture and Aspect AuxiliaryA/P > M > T > C

Negative Cycle in Old English450-1400 CE

a. no/ne early Old English

b. ne (na wiht/not) after 900, esp S

c. (ne) not after 1350

d. not > -not/-n’t after 1400

Old English:

(1) Men ne cunnon secgan to soðe ... hwa

Man not could tell to truth ... who

`No man can tell for certain ... who'.

(2) Næron 3e noht æmetti3e, ðeah ge wel ne dyden

not-were you not unoccupied. though you well not did

`You were not unoccupied, though you did not do well'.

Weakening and renewal(1) we cannot tell of (Wycliff Sermons from

the 1380s)

(2) But I shan't put you to the trouble of farther Excuses, if you please this Business shall rest here. (Vanbrugh, The Relapse1680s).

(3) that the sonne dwellith therfore nevere the more ne lasse in oon signe than in another (Chaucer, Astrolabe 665 C1).

(4) No, I never see him these days (BNC - A9H 350)

The Negative Cycle

XP

Spec X'

na wiht X YP

not > n’t …

Cycle or Spiral?

von der Gabelentz 1901:

“always the same: the development curves back towards isolation, not in the old way, but in a parallel fashion. That's why I compare them to spirals.”

(“immer gilt das Gleiche: die Entwicklungslinie krümmt sich zurück nach der Seite der Isolation, nicht in die alte Bahn, sondern in eine annähernd parallele. Darum vergleiche ich sie der Spirale”, p 256).

The Linguistic Cycle

- Gardiner (1904): Egyptian Negative cycle

- Hodge (1970: 3): Old Egyptian morphological complexity (synthetic stage) turned into Middle Egyptian syntactic structures (analytic stage) and then back into morphological complexity in Coptic.

- Givón (1971) “today’s morphology is yesterday's syntax“.

Language Change =- Cycles are the result of reanalysis by the

language learner who apply Economy Principles. I argue that the real sources of change are internal principles.

- This is very different from models such as Lightfoot's and Westergaard’s that examine how much input a child needs to reset a parameter. According to Lightfoot, "children scan their linguistic environment for structural cues" (2006: 32); for these, change comes from the outside

Internal Grammar

Macrocycles or Microcycles?- Hodge (1970: 3): Old Egyptian morphological

complexity (synthetic stage) turned into Middle Egyptian syntactic structures (analytic stage) and then back into morphological complexity in Coptic.

- Heine et al. (1991: 246): there is “more justification to apply the notion of a linguistic cycle to individual linguistic developments.”

- EvG: some cycles (e.g. agreement) are more important for the typology of a language than others (e.g. negative)

Why are Cycles interesting?

If these are real patterns of change,then they give insight in the Faculty of

Language

Factors:1. Genetic endowment2. Experience3. Principles not specific to language

Three factors, e.g. Chomsky 2007

(1) genetic endowment, which sets limits on the attainable languages, thereby making language acquisition possible;

(2) external data, converted to the experience that selects one or another language within a narrow range;

(3) principles not specific to [the Faculty of Language]. Some of the third factor principles have the flavor of the constraints that enter into all facets of growth and evolution, [...] Among these are principles of efficient computation"

Faculty of Language:what, how, why

Descriptive and explanatory

But currently also why, e.g.

- structure dependence rather than linear?

- why grammaticalization?

Economy

Locality = Minimize computational burden (Ross 1967; Chomsky 1973)

Use a head = Minimize Structure (Head Preference Principle, van Gelderen 2004)

Late Merge = Minimize computational burden (van Gelderen 2004, and others)

If there are Economy Principles, they should be visible in Lg Change

Two main patterns (van Gelderen 2004 etc):

a) Phrase to Head

b) Up the tree: both phrases and heads

Principles: acquisition and derivation

What: (a) Phrase (Specifier) > Head

Full pronoun to agreement

Demonstrative that to complementizer

Demonstrative pronoun to article

Negative adverb phrase to negation marker

Adverb phrase to aspect marker

Adverb phrase to complementizer

and (b) higher in the tree

On, from P to ASP (I am on going)

VP Adverbials > TP/CP Adverbials

Like, from P > C (like I said)

Negative objects to negative markers

Modals: v > ASP > T

Negative verbs to auxiliaries

To: P > ASP > M > C

PP > C (for something to happen)

Reanalysis of `how’ as Yes/No:

How/why: Cognitive Economy (or UG) principles

help the learner, e.g:

Phrase > head (minimize structure)

Avoid too much movement

(1) XP

Spec X'

X YP

Y …

Computational - Lexical

• Structural Economy is computational

• If all variation is in the lexicon, is there also `help’ for the learner there?

• Yes, Feature Economy: if you have a LI with i-F, use it with u-F as well.

The Subject Cycle

(1) demonstrative > third person pron > clitic > agrmnt(2) oblique > emphatic > first/second pron > clitic > agrmnt

Basque verbal prefixes n-, g-, z- = pronouns ni ‘I’, gu ‘we’, and zu ‘you’.

Pama-Nyungan, inflectional markers are derived from independent pronouns.

Iroquoian and Uto-Aztecan agreement markers derive from Proto-Iroquoian pronouns

Cree verbal markers ni-, ki-, o-/ø = pronouns niya, kiya, wiya.

Subject vs Agreement

Theta XP/X fixed lang

Full pron yes XP no Hindi/Urdu, Japanese

Head pron yes X no French, (English)Agrmnt =PAL yes X yes Arabic, Navajo

Agreement no X yes Hindi/Urdu, English

Some stagesJapanese and Urdu/Hindi: full pronoun(1) watashi-wa kuruma-o unten-suru kara.

I-TOP car-ACC drive-NONPST PRT‘I will drive the car'. (Yoko Matsuzaki p.c.)

(2) tiisai karesmall he

(3) watashi-wa drove the car I-TOP‘I drove the car.’ (Yoko Matsuzaki p.c.).

(4) mẽy nee us ko dekha1S ERG him DAT saw

(5) ham log `we people‘(6) mẽy or merii behn doonõ dilii mẽy rehtee hẽ

I and my sister both Delhi in living are

English: in transition(a) Modification, (b) coordination, (c) position, (d) doubling, (e) loss of V-movement, (f) Code switching

Coordination (and Case)(1) Kitty and me were to spend the day.(2) %while he and she went across the hall.

Position(3) She’s very good, though I perhaps I shouldn’t say

so.(4) You maybe you've done it but have forgotten.(5) Me, I was flying economy, but the plane, … was

guzzling gas

Doubling and cliticization(1) Me, I've tucking had it with the small place.(2) %Him, he ....(3) %Her, she shouldn’t do that (not

attested in the BNC)(4) *As for a dog, it should be happy.

CSE-FAC:uncliticized cliticized total

I 2037 685 (=25%) 2722you 1176 162 (=12.1%) 1338he 128 19 (=12.9%) 147

Loss of V-movement and Code switching

(5) What I'm go'n do?

`What am I going to do'

(6) How she's doing?

`How is she doing‘(7) *He ging weg `he went away’ Dutch-English CS

(8) The neighbor ging weg

Standard to Colloquial French(a) Modification, (b) coordination, (c) position, (d) doubling,

(e) loss of V-movement, (f) Code switching

(1) et c'est elle qui a eu la place.and it was her who has had the place

(2) *Je et tu ...(3) *je lis et ecris

(4) Moi, j’ai pas vu ça.(5) Et toi, tu aimes le rap?(6) on voit que lui il n'apprécie pas tellement la

politiqueone sees that him he not-appreciates not so the politics (LTSN corpus, p. 15-466)

More doubling, loss of V-movement and code switching

(1)une omelette elle est comme ça Swiss Spoken

an omelette she is like this(2)c'est que chacun il a sa manière de ... Swiss Spoken

it is that everyone he has his way of (Fonseca-Greber 2000: 335; 338).

(3) Alors pourquoi moi aussi je n'aurais pas le droit d'enfumer les autres quelques minutes dans un bar? Then why me also I not-have not the right to fill-with-smoke the others some minutes in a bar

(4) tu vas où Colloquial French2S go where

(5) nta tu vas travailler Arabic-Frenchyou you go work(from Bentahila and Davies 1983: 313).

Brazilian Portuguese(1) Vossa mercê > Vosmecê > (V)ocê > cê

your favor/mercy you you-indefinite

(see Mattoso Câmara 1979; Gonçalves 1987; Dutra 1991, cited in Vitral & Ramos 2006)

(2) cê only in subject position and pre-V

(3) ele(s) > el, esela(s) > éa, éas

(4) es inventa um bocado de coisa / eles inventam …`they invented (S) …’

ItalianVenice(1) Ti te magni sempre

you you eat always(2) Nissun (*el) magna

Nobody he eats (both from Poletto 2004)Trentino(3) Nisun l'ha dit niente

nobody he-has said nothing`Nobody said anything'

(4) Tut l'è capita de noteverything it-has happened at night(both from Brandi & Cordin 1989:118)

Subject Cycle: HPP and LMPTP TP

(=HPP)DP T’ DP T’pron T VP pron pron-T VP

… …

Urdu/Hindi, Japanese Coll French, CVC

TP[DP] T’ (=LMP)[pron] pron-T VP

Navajo, Spanish, Arabic

Actual Mechanism• stage (a): the pronoun moves from specifier of

vP to specifier of a higher FP• stage (b): the subject pronoun moves from vP-

internal position. At what point is the pronoun a head? Chomsky (1995: 249) says "a clitic raises from its [theta]-position, and attaches to an inflectional head. In its [theta]-position, the clitic is an XP; attachment to a head requires that it be an Xo".

• stage (c): pronouns in the higher position are reanalyzed as agreement markers (=LMP)

Why does `person’ start the cycle? Definiteness Hierarchy

1/2 > 3 > definite > indefinite/quantifier

Another instance: Mexican Spanish, overt Subject: 1sg 24.4%

2sg 12.5%

3sg 8.2% (Lopez, 2007)

Poletto (2000): SCL replaces features on a verb; different positions.

Feature Economy and the Subject Cycle

emphatic/

demonstrative > personal > agreement

[i-phi] [i-phi] [u-phi]

[i-deixis] [u-Case]

Feature EconomyMinimize the interpretable features in the derivation, e.g:

(1) Adjunct Specifier Head affixsemantic > [iF] > [uF]

(2) emphatic > full pronoun > head > agreement[i-phi] [i-phi] [u-1/2] [i-3] [u-phi]

Chomsky (1995: 230; 381) "formal features have semantic correlates and reflect semantic properties (accusative Case and transitivity, for example)." This makes sense if a language learner uses the semantic features in the derivation, these features turning into interpretable ones so to speak.

Feature Economy: select minimum from the lexicon

Locative Specifier Head affix

semantic > [iF] > [uF] > --

Head > (higher) Head > 0

[iF] / [uF] [uF]

uF is a Probe

What are some of the features?

TPT'

T vPDP v'

v VP[u-phi] DP V’[ACC] [i-phi] V

[u-Case]

Semantic, interpretable, and uninterpretable

Source of renewal

Old French Modern French

Emph Regular Emph Regular

Subject tu zero toi tu

Obliquetoi te toi te

(from Harris 1978)

Pronominal Argument Languages, e.g. Navajo

(a) optionality of nominals and sentences with more than one nominal are rare. Therefore: nominals are adjuncts, sometimes with a different case system (e.g. Jelinek 1989)

(1) bínabinishtinb-í-na-bi-ni-sh-tin3-against-around-3-Q-1S-handle-IMPF`I teach it to him' (Y&M 1987: 223)

(2) (Diné bizaad) yíníshta'Navajo language 1-study`I am studying Navajo'.

(b) Absence of anaphors and non-referential quantified DPs and (c) minimal embedding

(1) má'ii ałtso dibé baayijah

coyote all sheep 3-3-ran-away

`The sheep ran away from all the coyotes' or

`All the sheep ran away from the coyotes'.

(Jelinek 2001: 18).

(2) honeesná-nígíí yoodlá3.win-NOM 3.believe

`He believes he won' or

`he believes the winner' (Willie 1991: 178).

Back to English: features of DP

(1) a. *That the dog loves their the toys.

b. I saw that.

c. *I saw the.

(2) DP DP

that D’ D NP[i-loc] D NP the 3S[i-ps] 3S [u-phi]

History: Dem > Article

(1) hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedonhow those nobles courage did'how the nobles performed heroic acts' (Beowulf 3)

(2) se wæs Wine haten & se wæs in Gallia rice gehalgod.he was wine called and he was in Gaul consecrated

(3)Hi habbad mid him awyriedne engel, mancynnes feond, and se hæfd andweald... They have with them corrupt angel, mankind’s enemy, and he [the angel] has power over... (Ælfric, Homilies ii.488.14)

(1) gife to … þa munecas of þe mynstre

give to … the monks of the abbey (Peterborough Chron 1150)

(2) *the (Wood 2003: 69)

(3) Morret's brother came out of Scoteland for th'acceptacion of the peax

(The Diary of Edward VI, 1550s)

(4) Oh they used to be ever so funny houses you know and in them days … They used to have big windows, but they used to a all be them there little tiny ones like that. (BNC - FYD 72)

OE pronouns and demonstratives

He, heo, hit, hi - se, seo, etc.

non-deictic deictic

reflexive relative clause

So 1200: a reanalysis(1) & gaddresst swa þe clene corn All fra þe chaff

togeddre `and so you gather the clear wheat from the chaff.’ (Ormulum 1484-5, Holt edition)

(2) 3ho wass … Elysabæþ 3ehatenn `She was called Elisabeth.’ (Ormulum 115)

(3) & swa þe33 leddenn heore lif Till þatt te33 wærenn alde `and so they led their lives until they were old.’ (Ormulum 125-6)

(4) þin forrme win iss swiþe god, þin lattre win iss bettre. `Your earlier wine is very good, your later wine is better.’ (Ormulum 15409)

Internal Externalse --> the seo --> shethat --> that hi --> theyhim/her --> him/herself

a.se > the[i-loc]/[i-phi] [u-T]/[u-ps]

b.he/hi is replaced by heheo/ha is replaced by she (possibly via seo)hi/hie is replaced by they[i-phi] [i-phi]/[i-loc]

Conclusions

• (Micro)-Cycles exist• Economy Principles = Third factor• Children use these to analyze their input +

there is language change if accepted.• Change is from the inside• Possible Principles: HPP and LMP;

Feature Economy• Grammaticalization (SM Economy) vs

renewal(CI Economy)

And uF is `normal’

Chomsky (2002: 113) sees the semantic component as expressing thematic as well as discourse information. If thematic structure was already present in proto-language (Bickerton 1990), the evolutionary change of Merge made them linguistic. What was added through grammaticalization is the morphology, the second layer of semantic information.

Some References

Chomsky, Noam 2007. Approaching UG from below, in Uli Sauerland et al. (eds), Interfaces + Recursion = Language, 1-29. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Gardiner, Alan H. 1904. The word ... Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 41: 130-135.

Gelderen, Elly van 2004. Grammaticalization as Economy. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Gelderen, Elly van to appear. The Linguistic Cycle. OUP. Givón, Talmy 1971. Historical syntax and synchronic morphology.

Chicago Linguistic Society Proceedings 7: 394-415. Hodge, Carleton 1970. The Linguistic Cycle. Linguistic Sciences Vitral, Lorenso & Jânia Ramos 2006. Gramaticalização: uma

abordagem formal. Rio de Janeiro: Tempo Brasileiro.